An Old Favorite

I put a roll of Kentmere 100 through my Kodak Reflex II over a couple days.  It is one of those cameras for which I have a particular fondness because I was able to do a complete cleaning and adjustment without destroying it.  The reason for that is that the Reflex II is rather simple in its construction compared to my other tlr cameras.  The linked gear lenses are largely responsible for that simplicity.  

The pictures from this roll were artistically unremarkable, but I was happy with getting decent tonal results in combination with a fresh kit of PMK Pyro. 

The shot of my friend, Bob, was made in the dark corner of a coffee shop at 1/25 and f:3.5.  I was slightly off on the focus, but still pleased to get anything under those conditions.

 

It was a noteworthy accomplishment for Kodak to produce a full featured twin lens reflex at an affordable price in 1948.  The coated Anastar lens is very sharp and the viewfinder is as bright as anything made in those days.

 

f you have a Reflex II that needs some cleaning up, Rick Oleson's Tech Notes are free to download.

Trash Cans of Tiguex

 and some other stuff.

I saw some nice work on the Facebook Pen-F group done on Kentmere processed in Ilfosol 3.  I wanted to see how that combination compared to what I get with developing in PMK Pyro.  I thought the results weren't bad, but they don't seem to me to be quite as nice in regard to tonality and fine grain.  I'm thinking I may try the Ilfosol 3 with some medium format Fomapan next.

Venturing Out

 A weekend of fine weather prompted me to get out with my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim loaded with some well-expired Agfa APX 100.

To compensate for the age of the APX 100 I developed it in Rodinal 1:25 for a couple minutes over the recommended time.  The sunny morning park shots looked fine , but the dark interiors produced very thin negatives requiring some careful photoshopping.

A Walk in the Park

 I shot another roll of expired Tri-X in the No.1A Pocket Kodak on a morning walk through our nearby park.  My main objective was to test a strategy for correctly spacing the frames.  I decided after advancing the film by an initial eight and one half rotations to get to the first exposure I would then give two and one half turns to get to the second frame.  From there the plan was to decrease the film advance by one quarter turn for each subsequent frame with the hope of getting six or more shots on the roll of 120 film.

Well, the first two frames looked just right.  After that the pictures started to run into each other and I ended up with just muddled fragments of images on the rest of the roll.  Not the hoped for outcome, but it was a fun outing in which I learned something, and I thought the bits and pieces still showed some of the nice qualities which the Kodak Anastigmat lens can produce.

In addition to the frame spacing problem, I also ended up having to square up most of the images in Photoshop as a result of grossly tilted horizons.  For that, I'm blaming the use of the tiny reflex finder which seems to aggravate my tendency to misperceive which way is up.  So, for my next outing I'll try using the open frame finder which I usually tape onto the top of my folders, as well as a revised film advance routine.

The one thing I'm pleased to report was not a problem was focal distance estimation.  Snapping pictures under the full Summer sun with a top shutter speed of 1/50 and 400 speed film, the correct aperture setting is f45.  Having consulted a dof calculator before setting out, I knew that the hyperfocal distance for the 127mm lens at that setting was seventeen feet, and that everything from 8.5 feet to infinity would be sharply focused.  For some of the closer shots and with the aperture a stop or two wider the available depth of focus was still well within my margin of error for distance estimation.